There is a teacher shortage across the state of Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania Department of Education (PDE) launched a new website (https://www.pa.gov/teachpa/) to provide resources and information to individuals interested in becoming educators in the commonwealth.

The website includes testimonials from real-life teachers, career and certification process guidance, information about individualized pathways to becoming an educator, and more, according to a press release from Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration.

But the website may not be enough to encourage more interest in the profession, according to the administration of local school districts.

Bradford Area School District Superintendent Katy Pude said, “We, in the Bradford district, are fully staffed. We don’t have a teacher shortage here, in fact, some of our former staff are coming back.” She did acknowledge that this is not the case in other parts of the region.

Sam Johnson, BASD assistant superintendent, added to Pude’s comments, “We were fully staffed with teachers at the start of the year (and still are),” he said. “We have had to take advantage of some of the options offered through PDE for both our regular full-time teachers and our substitutes.”

He said BASD has a few teachers that are on emergency permits, certificates issued by PDE that allow them to teach while working toward their teacher certification. The district also has teachers who are pursuing a degree on another type of emergency permit/certificate that requires the employee to take a required number of credits each year toward their certification.

Johnson said, “If they do not meet the course requirements, their certificate will not be renewed. This is an option we are using more and more to essentially ‘grow our own’ teachers.”

However, there is also a substitute shortage, according to Johnson. BASD uses alternative pathways for securing emergency permits. Johnson said he and the district are appreciative of the new state website and the expedited time in processing certificates, including emergency permits.

Earlier this year, PDE announced that processing timelines for In-State Level I certificates have been reduced by approximately 10 weeks since 2022. The department also launched a new feature on its website to improve transparency and responsiveness in the educator certification process. The certification “clock” on PDE’s certification page shows, in real time, the length of time needed to process a certificate once all required information is submitted.

Port Allegany School District Superintendent Gary Buchsen said that during the past three years he has noticed the difficulty in hiring certified teachers. He believes this drop is much more than pandemic-related and said, “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

In his district, he hired the final three teachers he needed for the academic year on emergency certifications; however, he had to go out and find them.

“I needed two teachers for special education and one for business, and candidates. We contacted members of the community who we knew had a degree and thought might be interested in working with children — we cold-called them,” he said. It worked out and all three positions were filled before the school year began. “They are all doing great work; we were fortunate — this time,” Buchsen said.

Otto-Eldred School District Superintendent Matt Splain agreed that finding qualified candidates has been difficult for his district as well. However, like BASD, the district has worked with applicants and staff to secure emergency certifications as the need arises. As to the new PDE website, Splain said, “While this site may be a helpful resource, the issues we face attracting and retaining personnel cannot be fixed by a website.”

It is not only teaching positions that have been hard to fill, Splain said.

“Just about any position in the district has been difficult to fill, not just teaching positions. While pay is a significant factor in the hiring process, we like to promote our school environment, benefits and schedule to candidates.”

He added, “We have seen less applicants for most positions over the last several years. Right now, we have one open teaching position. But we have been very fortunate to have a number of staff that are certified in multiple areas and have been willing to help fill gaps. Other staff have committed to taking additional coursework to be certified in needed areas.”

The U.S. Department of Education reported a steady decline in the number of people who ultimately receive their teaching credentials.

Splain said, “At the national level, the criticisms focused on school systems have increased dramatically. That by itself creates a challenge in attracting and hiring candidates. Our profession needs to do a better job of promoting what we offer — the opportunity to impact our future generations. We need to highlight the successes and not let stories of one or two bad apples create a negative narrative about the entire profession and the work we do every day.”

Splain is not alone. Buchsen thinks that more focus on the benefits of teaching the next generation should be a high priority.

“It would be a benefit for Pennsylvania to look at the requirements for certification,” the Port Allegany superintendent said. “The traditional approaches to getting certified are a little restrictive and don’t work with current staffing issues to get home-grown teachers. The number of interested students in the teaching profession has gone down tremendously across the state.”

Buchsen continued, “The number of teaching certificates issued across the state has gone down significantly in the last 10 to 12 years.” According to PDE, more than 15,000 in-state certifications were issued during the 2010-11 school year. By 2021-22, only around 4,200 certificates were issued, the lowest level of newly certified teachers since 2010.

He added, “If you were to combine all the new hires, there are more with emergency certificates than with credentials from a program.”

As others have pointed out, the struggle to be fully staffed is not only in the field of teaching. BASD is having a difficult time finding a full-time school psychologist. To solve the issue, they have contracted with Seneca Highlands Intermediate Unit 9, an organization where 14 school districts work cooperatively to provide services that alone they otherwise may not be able to afford.

Port Allegany, though fully staffed, has seen difficulties in hiring high-school-level math and science teachers as well as teachers for special education, said Buchsen.

“There will probably come a time when students from one school district are taking their math and science classes virtually from another school district, due to a lack of qualified teachers. The pandemic helped us see how this could be doable, but it is not the same as having the teacher on site,” Buchsen explained.